Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

Nothing Pacific About This War

Hugh Ambrose’s companion book to The Pacific, the HBO miniseries, recreates hell in words

No one with any sense of history can doubt the human capacity for violence, hate, destruction, and killing. In The Pacific, Hugh Ambrose (son of the late historian Stephen Ambrose) provides an intimate picture of that capacity. The book chronicles the war experiences of four Marines and a Navy pilot in the Pacific war against Japan. Ambrose appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 12 at 7 p.m.

Read more

"Wondrous" is the Word

Humanities Tennessee welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This epic is an atypical coming-of-age story about the literary-minded Oscar, along with meditations, both comic and tragic, on the members of his Dominican family. More broadly, however, it’s a biography of the relationship between then and now, there and here—between present-day New Jersey and the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Raphael Trujillo in the 1930s and 1940s. While it explores the complicated journeys made by the children of immigrants in America, the book also reminds us, with mesmerizing stories of generations past, that our homeland is never very far away. Díaz will speak in Memphis at the Germantown Performing Arts Center at 10:30 a.m. on April 8, and in Nashville at Stratford High School auditorium at 9 a.m. on April 9.

Read more

"Inspired Debut"

Nashville novelist Adam Ross snags rhapsodic reviews in both Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly

April 8, 2010 The buzz about Adam Ross’s debut novel, Mr. Peanut, has been building all year, and Ross just keeps getting good news. Last week, the pre-publication industry news journal Kirkus Reviews gave the book a starred review, calling it “an intellectual noir novel that shows evidence of an original voice.”

Read more

Crazy About Miss Julia

In her latest book in the Miss Julia series, Ann B. Ross considers the lunatic reach of love

In Miss Julia Renews Her Vows, the eleventh book of the series, Ann B. Ross gives her heroine about all she can handle. And readers will love every page of the adventure. Ross will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on April 9 at 7 p.m.

Read more

Not Your Father's Fugitive

Vanderbilt MFA candidates launch a new literary magazine

April 7, 2010 Graduate students in Vanderbilt University's nationally ranked MFA program have launched a national literary magazine, Nashville Review. The online journal, which went live on April 1, is a daunting project the students "conceived of, pursued, and brought into being all by themselves," says poet—and Vanderbilt professor of creative writing—Kate Daniels.

Read more

Duking It Out

Amanda Little, author of Power Trip, takes on climate-change skeptic Phelim McAleer in a debate moderated by the inimitable Sarah Silverman

April 7, 2010 If your idea of a multimedia presentation on global warming begins and ends with the somber pronouncements of An Inconvenient Truth, check out the debate between Nashvillian Amanda Little, author of Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells—A Ride to Our Renewable Future, and independent filmmaker Phelim McAleer, a global-warming denier. The debate, sponsored by Lexus to call attention to its new hybrid vehicle, was held in New York City on March 30 and proved to be a raucous event.

Read more
TAKE THE SHORT READER SURVEY! CHAPTER 16 SURVEYOR SURVEYING